Notes on the geographical variation of Hipparchia autonoe (Insecta: Nymphalidae: Satyrinae) with description of a new subspecies from Qinghai (China)

Hipparchia autonoe (Esper, 1783) is a Palaearctic species showing a wide-ranging geographical distribution from the Caucasus to Tibet across the south of Siberia and Mongolia to the Far East of Asia and the north of China, and a considerable degree of phenotypic variation. This note focuses on the area that includes the highlands of Qinghai, Tibet and Gansu, where diferent phenotypes and races ly at a relatively short distance from one another, demanding both a taxonomic revision and a biogeographical interpretation. In particular, we describe H. autonoe arcellae n. ssp. from Qinghai, and resurrect the taxon H. a. extrema as a valid subspecies, formerly synonymized by Kudrna (1977) with the nominotypical subspecies. Both its distinctive wing pattern and male genitalia morphometrics support this interpretation. From a biogeographical point of view, processes of vicariance and dispersal, similar to those reported on plants, could have afected evolutionary divergence of populations in refugia of the Qinghai-Gansu-Sichuan area followed by a recent demographic spread. The relatively greater uniformity of the Eurasian populations is also hypothesized to be the result of a quite recent expansion.